Air Products & Chemicals Inc is a supplier of hydrogen and helium. It also provides semiconductor materials, refinery hydrogen, natural gas liquefaction and coatings and adhesives.

Established in 1940, Air Products is among the largest global producers of atmospheric gases and is the world's largest supplier of hydrogen and helium. It offers a unique portfolio of products and services in a number of industries, including energy, electronics, chemicals, metals, and manufacturing. The company operates in more than 40 countries, with international sales representing more than half of revenue. In fiscal 2016, Air Products generated $9.5 billion in sales and employed roughly 19,000 workers.

Guru Investment Theses on Air Products & Chemicals Inc

Bill Ackman Comments on Air Products - Nov 16, 2017

We recently sold our remaining shares of Air Products (NYSE:APD) (“APD”), concluding a highly successful activist investment. During our four-and-half-year investment, APD delivered a 104.7% total shareholder return. In comparison, the S&P 500 returned 69.9% over the same period.

Prior to our investment, APD had slipped from an industry leader to a laggard. While APD participated in a good industry and had produced positive shareholder returns over time, its performance was substantially inferior to its peers and its potential. APD’s margins of 15% trailed direct competitor Praxair’s 23% margins. Furthermore, APD’s operational inefficiency led to subpar growth. The company also owned several non-core specialty materials businesses, and had a history of poor capital allocation.

APD’s underperformance was purportedly due to myriad reasons detailed by the prior management team and accepted by the analyst community. Our extensive due diligence revealed that with a proper transformation, APD could achieve meaningfully higher margins and growth.

We built our position in APD during the summer of 2013 and announced our investment in late July. We then engaged with the board of APD, which carefully and constructively evaluated the opportunities for improvement we had identified. Within two months of announcing our investment, we reached an agreement with APD to add three directors to the board, including two Pershing Square nominees and one mutually agreed upon director.

APD’s former CEO and board concluded that a change in leadership was necessary to effectuate the necessary transformation of the business. The board then launched a search process for a new CEO and we were provided full transparency on the process with the ability to assess candidates. After a nine-month search, APD’s board selected one of our director nominees, Seifi Ghasemi, to serve as its CEO.

Within months of taking over as CEO, Seifi announced his goal to make APD the most profitable industrial gas company in the world by restructuring the organization, transforming the culture, focusing on the company’s core industrial gas business, and implementing a more disciplined approach to capital allocation. The results that Seifi and his team have delivered have been remarkable, and have exceeded the conservative estimates we put forth at the time of our investment. Air Products is now the most profitable company in the industrial gas industry, with an operating margin of 22%. The company has executed spinoff and sale transactions for its non-core materials businesses, generating substantial cash proceeds and leverage capacity which is being deployed into high-return, core industrial gas assets. As a result of these improvements, APD has delivered double-digit EPS growth for three consecutive years despite foreign exchange headwinds.

Air Products’ board deserves enormous credit for engaging constructively and helping the company deliver on its potential. CEO Seifi Ghasemi and his team, including Industrial Gases Executive Vice President Corning Painter and CFO Scott Crocco, who were both at APD under prior leadership, have done a superb job transforming APD for the benefit of all stakeholders.

Bill Ackman Comments on Air Products and Chemicals - Aug 18, 2017

APD (NYSE:APD) continues to deliver strong results for its shareholders. On July 27, 2017, the company reported that Fiscal Q3 earnings per share grew 15%, driven by 8% revenue growth from increased volumes and 90 basis points of underlying margin expansion. Revenue growth was driven by organic growth and contributions from new plants coming on stream. Margin performance reflects continued operating efficiencies. Management has stated that they “have more work to do on productivity” and that “they continue to see productivity opportunities.” Equipment sales, which are more episodic, added to APD’s strong performance.

While foreign currency headwinds have been a material drag on APD’s results in recent years, we expect this dynamic will start to become a modest tailwind assuming that rates stay at current levels. A modest global recovery in industrial activity is another positive factor that we expect will fuel further growth.

In addition to the organic growth APD has achieved, the company continues to bring on stream growth capex projects, including large facilities in India and China, which are producing results. Growth capex continues to drive meaningful increases in cash flow despite significantly reduced capex budgets as new projects benefit from the capable underwriting of CEO Seifi Ghasemi and his team.

One of the largest catalysts for APD’s further value creation remains the use of the company’s excess capital. The company currently has approximately $5 billion of investment capital, comprised of cash and leverage capacity. Management expects this amount to grow to $8 billion over the coming three years, as the company generates annual cash flow of approximately $1 billion before growth capex and after dividends. On the recent call, CEO Seifi Ghasemi reiterated that the company will be disciplined in deploying this cash in value-generating projects.

We reduced our position in Air Products during the quarter for portfolio management reasons.

Bill Ackman Comments on Air Products and Chemicals - May 12, 2017

Air Products (NYSE:APD) continues to deliver for its shareholders. Fiscal year Q2 results showed continued operating progress with underlying revenue growth of 7% and earnings per share growth of 4%. Revenue growth was driven by 7% volume and flat pricing. Excluding energy pass-through and mix factors, underlying EBITDA margins declined 40 basis points as productivity gains were offset by higher costs from maintenance outages of facilities in the U.S., delayed recovery of energy prices in Europe in the merchant market, and the ramp of lower-margin tonnage contracts in Asia.

Management stated that it was “disappointed that our underlying productivity did not fully translate to the bottom line” and that “there is more to come in productivity.” These comments are consistent with our view that Air Products continues to have potential for further operating productivity and margin expansion.

Air Products’ fiscal year ending September 2017 guidance calls for earnings per share of $6.00 to $6.25, or 6% to 11% growth over the prior year. This earnings guidance excludes the benefit from the investment of the company’s significant excess capital. While management has been cautious on the economy, APD’s business has historically closely tracked industrial production. U.S. industrial production has been negative in recent years, but has now turned positive since the election for the first time in the last 18 months.

We believe the biggest driver of APD’s earnings growth over the coming years will be the company’s deployment of its excess capital. The company has $2.5 billion of excess cash and an additional $2.5 billion of debt capacity and will generate additional excess capital of $1 billion per year after paying dividends for a total of $8 billion of capital available for investment over the next three years.

CEO Seifi Ghasemi has stated that we “remain confident, and I'd like to stress the word confident, that we can deploy the $8 billion into high-return, value-creating investments in our core industrial gases business.” Seifi has a great track record of allocating capital for shareholders. We believe that Seifi and his team are being patient in their deployment of shareholder capital in pursuit of opportunities to invest in high-return acquisitions and projects. Absent sufficient attractive opportunities to deploy capital, we would expect Air Products to return capital to shareholders.

Bill Ackman Comments on Air Products and Chemicals - May 08, 2017

During 2016, Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. (NYSE:APD) continued to make substantial progress on its transformation under its CEO Seifi Ghasemi. Management has restructured the company into a decentralized organization with greater accountability while transforming the culture and aligning pay with improvements in regional operating results.

Operating margins continued to improve during the most recent fiscal year, increasing 400 basis points to 23.1% in 2016 (APD’s fiscal year ends September 30th, and this year’s results included the non-core businesses subsequently divested and spun). This significant improvement in operating margins drove a 14% increase in earnings per share, exceeding the high end of the company’s fiscal year guidance despite 3% foreign exchange headwinds.

During the year, Air Products executed spinoff and sale transactions for its non-core electronic materials and performance materials businesses, generating substantial cash proceeds. Following these transactions, the company now has minimal net debt with cash on hand and leverage capacity totaling approximately $5 billion. We expect management to invest this capital wisely in the currently opportunistic acquisition environment for core industrial gas assets. The company has highlighted potential small acquisitions and the purchase of captive assets from customers as two potential sources of opportunity.

In January, Air Products issued fiscal year 2017 first quarter results, which showed 9% growth in earnings per share. The quarterly result announcement included a reduction in fiscal year 2017 guidance originally issued in October. While the company reduced guidance by $0.25, only five cents of this reduction is related to the core industrial gases business with the remainder driven by spin-related accounting adjustments, foreign exchange movements, and lower sales of equipment. Seifi highlighted concerns relating to the current uncertainty resulting from the new U.S. administration, Brexit, and upcoming European elections as the cause for his reduced outlook for the core industrial gas business. Notably, Seifi emphasized that the company has not seen any particular weakness in its business, but is simply taking a cautious tone on guidance given the current uncertainty.

If Seifi’s caution about the economy turns out to be conservative and in fact, the new administration contributes to economic growth with successful initiatives in corporate tax reform, infrastructure spending and deregulation, Air Products should be a big beneficiary. While our investment thesis is not predicated on improvements in economic growth, any improvements in growth from recently weak levels should improve Air Products’ organic volume and pricing trends in its merchant business.

Air Products’ revised fiscal year 2017 EPS guidance of $6.00 to $6.25 represents growth of 6% to 11% over the prior year. The guidance is principally driven by continued operating productivity and returns on growth capex and assumes continued economic weakness. Seifi has emphasized that the guidance for the fiscal year does not include any use of the company’s excess capital. As such, this earnings estimate meaningfully understates the company’s true underlying earnings power. We also believe that GAAP earnings understate the true economic earnings of the company as we believe the company’s core assets are longer-lived than the periods over which they are depreciated.

We believe the upside in APD remains significant. APD’s business is extremely high-quality, reasonably priced and run by outstanding management.

Air Products’ total shareholder return (7), including dividends and the spinoff of Versum, was 24.0% in 2016.

Bill Ackman Comments on Air Products and Chemicals - Mar 30, 2017

During 2016, Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. (NYSE:APD) continued to make substantial progress on its transformation under its CEO Seifi Ghasemi. Management has restructured the company into a decentralized organization with greater accountability while transforming the culture and aligning pay with improvements in regional operating results.

Operating margins continued to improve during the most recent fiscal year, increasing 400 basis points to 23.1% in 2016 (APD’s fiscal year ends September 30th, and this year’s results included the non-core businesses subsequently divested and spun). This significant improvement in operating margins drove a 14% increase in earnings per share, exceeding the high end of the company’s fiscal year guidance despite 3% foreign exchange headwinds.

During the year, Air Products executed spinoff and sale transactions for its non-core electronic materials and performance materials businesses, generating substantial cash proceeds. Following these transactions, the company now has minimal net debt with cash on hand and leverage capacity totaling approximately $5 billion. We expect management to invest this capital wisely in the currently opportunistic acquisition environment for core industrial gas assets. The company has highlighted potential small acquisitions and the purchase of captive assets from customers as two potential sources of opportunity.

In January, Air Products issued fiscal year 2017 first quarter results, which showed 9% growth in earnings per share. The quarterly result announcement included a reduction in fiscal year 2017 guidance originally issued in October. While the company reduced guidance by $0.25, only five cents of this reduction is related to the core industrial gases business with the remainder driven by spin-related accounting adjustments, foreign exchange movements, and lower sales of equipment. Seifi highlighted concerns relating to the current uncertainty resulting from the new U.S. administration, Brexit, and upcoming European elections as the cause for his reduced outlook for the core industrial gas business. Notably, Seifi emphasized that the company has not seen any particular weakness in its business, but is simply taking a cautious tone on guidance given the current uncertainty.

If Seifi’s caution about the economy turns out to be conservative and in fact, the new administration contributes to economic growth with successful initiatives in corporate tax reform, infrastructure spending and deregulation, Air Products should be a big beneficiary. While our investment thesis is not predicated on improvements in economic growth, any improvements in growth from recently weak levels should improve Air Products’ organic volume and pricing trends in its merchant business.

Air Products’ revised fiscal year 2017 EPS guidance of $6.00 to $6.25 represents growth of 6% to 11% over the prior year. The guidance is principally driven by continued operating productivity and returns on growth capex and assumes continued economic weakness. Seifi has emphasized that the guidance for the fiscal year does not include any use of the company’s excess capital. As such, this earnings estimate meaningfully understates the company’s true underlying earnings power. We also believe that GAAP earnings understate the true economic earnings of the company as we believe the company’s core assets are longer-lived than the periods over which they are depreciated.

We believe the upside in APD remains significant. APD’s business is extremely high-quality, reasonably priced and run by outstanding management.

Air Products’ total shareholder return (7), including dividends and the spinoff of Versum, was 24.0% in 2016.

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